This Is Not A Border

by Ahdaf Soueif

  In addition, the settlers have the right to carry weapons. When we were visiting one of the most awful checkpoints inside Hebron this one settler, extremely aggressive, was filming us. At the sight of anything Palestinian – it could be the smallest thing, a bracelet, a pin – he ran straight to the soldiers and gave a report.

  Naturally, nothing of what we experienced can ever be compared to the situation of the Palestinian people. We met them in cabs and on the street, at readings, at universities and theatres. We talked to them and listened to their stories.

  Is it strange that some of them in pure desperation, when they cannot see any other way out, decide to become suicide bombers? Not really. Maybe it is strange that there are not more of them. The wall that is currently dividing the country will prevent future attacks, in the short term. But the wall is an obvious demonstration of the desperation of the Israeli military power. In the end, it will face the same destiny as the wall that once divided Berlin.

  What I saw during my trip was obvious: the state of Israel in its current form has no future. Moreover, those who advocate a two-state solution have not got it right.

  In 1948, the year of my birth, the state of Israel proclaimed its independence on occupied land. There are no reasons whatsoever to call that a legitimate intervention according to international law. What happened was that Israel simply occupied Palestinian land. And the amount of land under possession is constantly growing, with the war in 1967 and with the increasing number of settlements today. Once in a while, a settlement is torn down. But it is just for show. Soon enough it pops up somewhere else. A two-state solution will not be the end of the historical occupation.

  The same thing will happen in Israel that happened in South Africa during the apartheid regime. The question is whether it will be possible to talk sense into the Israelis, to make them willingly accept the end of their own apartheid state. Or if it has to happen against their will. No one can tell us when this will happen. The final insurrection will of course start from within. But emergent political changes in Syria or Egypt will contribute. Equally important is that, probably sooner rather than later, the United States will no longer be able to afford to pay for this horrible military force that prevents stone-throwing youths from having a normal life in freedom.

  When change is coming, each Israeli has to decide for him- or herself if he or she is prepared to give up their privileges and live in a Palestinian state. During my trip I met no anti-Semitism. What I did see was a hatred of the occupiers that is completely normal and understandable. To keep these two things separate is crucial.

  The last night of our trip was supposed to end in the same way that we had tried to start it – in Jerusalem. But the military and the police closed down the theatre once again. We held our event somewhere else.

  The state of Israel can only expect to be defeated like all occupying powers. The Israelis are destroying lives. But they are not destroying dreams. The fall of this disgraceful apartheid system is the only thing conceivable, because it must be.

  The question, therefore, is not if but when it will happen. And in what way.

  June 2009

  WHAT WE WITNESSED

  Michael Ondaatje

  What we witnessed in the Palestinian territories – in Hebron, in Jerusalem, in Haifa and other cities – during our time there with PalFest was an almost complete erasure of human rights – the rights of movement, the rights of ownership, of homes and land. The humiliations and limitations of Palestinians were so blunt and evident one cannot believe that they still exist in our twenty-first century, and still continue unimpeded and unprotested.

  June 2014

  STORIES FROM THE ARMENIAN QUARTER

  Nancy Kricorian

  G tells me that a few months after the Israelis conquered East Jerusalem he asked his father what he thought life would be like; would it be better or worse than under the Ottomans, the British or the Jordanians, all of whom his father had known? The old man told him that only the week before an American Jewish dentist had offered free dental care to all the kindergarten children at the Holy Translators School. They can’t be all bad, his father said, if they want to look after our children’s teeth.

  Later G met the dentist himself and thanked him for his good offices. Yes, the dentist said, there was some discussion in the upper echelons of the Israeli government about whether the Armenians had intermarried with the Arabs. I went, he said, to inspect the children’s teeth – you can tell from the jaw structure – and I was able to report that the Armenians were 100 per cent pure.

  B, a priest I meet at a church supper in Virginia during my book tour, tells me that when he was a seminarian in Jerusalem in the early 70s the Haredi Jews spat on the Armenian priests on a daily basis – and on the seminary students. He says, One day I just got fed up with it. I called the other seminarians together – there were five of us – and we agreed that we’d undo our belts and keep the belts and our hands inside our cassocks. We walked out of the church and a man spat on us, and we pulled out our belts and gave him a thrashing. It might not have been the Christian thing to do, but I was young then and it was satisfying.

  I say to B they still spit on the priests on a daily basis in the Armenian Quarter. Yes, he tells me, I know. I couldn’t stay there. I might have risen higher in the Church if I had stayed, and the spitting I could have learned to tolerate, but watching the way they degraded the Palestinians was too much for me.

  N says that everything is a problem in the Armenian Quarter. Getting a building permit is a problem. Having a regular travel document is a problem. Even finding a place to park your car is a problem.

  The Patriarch signed a ninety-nine-year lease with an Israeli company that wanted to build a parking lot on Armenian Patriarchate land, she says. They built the parking lot, and we could park there, although we had to pay more than the Israelis did. And then one day they decided it was a ‘Jews Only’ parking lot, and we could no longer park there because we’re Armenian even though it was on land belonging to the Armenian Church.

  N says, They don’t want us here, that’s clear. They want the churches, they want the houses, the land, and they want the money from the Christian pilgrims and tourists. I think ideally they would like all the Christians to disappear, and then Jews could dress up as Christians like characters in Disney World.

  K’s family has been in Jerusalem for several generations. He outlines their entire trajectory – where his grandparents lived when they first arrived after the Genocide, where they took their children during the war in 1948, the house they returned to in 1950, how they managed in 1967 and how they live today with ever greater difficulty. K says, Just because I’m Armenian doesn’t mean that I’m treated differently from other Palestinians. I think of myself as a Palestinian who is an ethnic Armenian. We breathe the same tear gas.

  It takes some prodding, but S, the owner of a ceramics shop, finally tells me what he thinks of the occupation. They are chopping us like salad, he says. Everyone who has any means is leaving. They are slicing us like salami. First Gaza, then the West Bank. We are only hoping the machine breaks down before they get to us.

  New York City, September 2016

  A SCRAMBLE OF AUTHORS

  Michael Palin

  Although I’d travelled the world a fair bit, nothing in my experience quite prepared me for PalFest. For a start all my companions were writers. Poets, novelists, playwrights. And unlike many a book festival we were not brought together in one place for a day or two days’ work. We were on the move together for a week (though I had to leave early to attend a more conventional literary book event in France) and we were travelling to a country of ancient culture and rich heritage which no longer officially exists but with which I felt powerfully familiar.

  Palestine was where the Bible stories on which I was brought up were set, and as we crossed the Allenby Bridge I found myself looking out over the mythic waters of the River Jordan. And that was the first disappointment. The Jor
dan was little more than a muddy stream, its waters barely detectable.

  For the first time in my life I found myself in Jerusalem, but with what an introduction. Before I could absorb much of this great city, our very first event was closed down by Israeli armed police. For some reason our stalls of books and tea and cakes were seen to be a threat to the authorities. In the wrong place at the wrong time. But the disappointment was short-lived and the see-saw of elation and frustration which marked our days together was established as we carried our wares, books, biscuits and all, down the street to the French Cultural Centre, where the first event of PalFest 2009 was able to go on undisturbed.

  The next day we headed for Ramallah. I had the infinitely depressing experience of passing through the security wall separating Jerusalem from the West Bank, the most powerful physical reminder of the tensions that characterise what we were all taught to call the Holy Land. Once through however a highlight of the trip lay ahead. Raja Shehadeh (whose absorbing and inspiring book Palestinian Walks had been part of my preparatory reading) along with his wife Penny hosted a gathering at his house with the lemon tree in the courtyard. Then, followed by a scramble of authors, struggling to keep up with the diminutive Raja, he recreated one of his walks, down through the olive groves.

  Raja was quietly informative, but I remember being surprised by his strong denunciation of the Oslo Accords, on the grounds that they had formalised a separateness between the Palestinians and Israelis which reduced contact and therefore obstructed any real chance of understanding between the two communities. Mind you, he also told me that Arabs love cats. The prophet was said to have cut off bits of his coat rather than disturb a cat sleeping on it.

  We were all getting to know each other better, and the interaction between Westerners and locals was celebratory and stimulating. Nervous as I was at my first panel I was fortunate to be ‘onstage’ in the gardens one evening with Raja and the force of nature that is Suad Amiry. Tall, strikingly beautiful and a terrific raconteur, with a rich head of hair and an even richer laugh, she showed it was possible to be passionate and very funny at the same time.

  The next day I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work with the Swedish author Henning Mankell and the Freedom Theatre of Jenin. For two or three hours we took a workshop together. Something that would have been inconceivable without PalFest, it was a rare and valuable chance to use drama to air differences and confront problems.

  And then on, through seemingly endless checkpoints, to Bethlehem, a pilgrimage site for centuries, now ringed by the security wall and refugee camps. And yet here too the panel discussions allowed us to learn how people lived with the situation and how they felt able to speak out fluently and fervently.

  PalFest was one of the most concentrated periods of my life. Nothing had prepared me for the intense feelings and emotions in this crucible of religion and politics. There was so much to see, so much to discuss, debate, celebrate and deplore. PalFest created a team spirit which was always alert and alive. Though there were daily scenes that lowered the spirits, I’ve rarely laughed as much as with my companions on that tour. And above all else it was an affirmation that through writing and storytelling we could share universal values in a land where it is easy to give up hope.

  We had flown in to Amman on a Saturday. As we were about to land, Suheir Hammad, one of the Palestinian writers in our group, had promised me, ‘By Sunday you’ll be shouting to get out. By Wednesday you won’t want to leave.’ She was right.

  And what I learned in those few days will stay with me for the rest of my life.

  London, 2016

  BETHLEHEM

  Sabrina Mahfouz

  Next December

  when nativity scenes

  swamp school halls and high street corners,

  ripped bedsheets

  strung around children’s shoulder bones

  as they play three kings,

  I will think of the shop where the Palestinian

  let me charge my mobile phone for free.

  Coaches were parked nearby

  full of t-shirt tourists eager to touch the city

  where Jesus was born.

  They are told before they arrive

  ‘the Christians here are hounded by the Muslims,

  made to feel unwelcome’.

  The Christian in the shop

  where my iPhone charges says;

  ‘but of course not, we are the same, it is Israel who hounds us all.

  Israel covers itself with paper angels,

  shepherding a concrete wall around us who live where Jesus did.

  Mystery exists here, a virgin birth etcetera,

  those buildings that appear overnight

  so magical, so monstrous’.

  O little town of Bethlehem.

  My phone charged now, I tweet a picture of an old man

  hunched over a walking stick, carrying white cheese and watermelon

  as the unemployed smoke along the street

  looking up at an illegal sky

  clangorous church bells reminding everyone

  that there is no such thing

  as wise men.

  CRUCIFIXION

  Nathalie Handal

  2013. I sit by the window and wait for her to finish her story. She has the posture of a ballerina. Her honey-coloured eyes against her hot magenta headscarf offer a striking contrast. We are on a bus at the Bethlehem checkpoint en route to Jerusalem. The anthology of Arabic verse I’m carrying inspired the exchange. She tells me that each time she enters Damascus Gate she recreates the day that changed her forever. Then adds that she has eleven versions so far. I don’t know what she is speaking about and for a second the sky’s paleness distracts us. She explains:

  I memorise. I’m addicted to memorising. I memorise the exact pitch in the voice of the cake seller, the gleam in my sister’s eyes when she meets the sun by the window, the circumference of the circular window. I memorise al-Mutanabbi. I just memorised the face in the red Toyota Corolla that passed by us. I memorise street numbers, abandoned neckties, books. I memorise him. His charcoal eyes. His full lips. Square chin. White teeth. I forget him. I keep re-memorising him. Together we wrote poetry. Threw the fear into the mountains we never could get to.

  I forget he memorised with me. Once we memorised Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s work, and as we started Ghassan Kanafani’s stories the half-moon insisted we memorise it first. We were happy in our craziness. We ached. I memorise the way my hands get cold and my heart beats aimlessly as if it’s broken. I forget I remember him. And his Lifta. Forget the rain caught in the yellow light of night. I forget the pen he gave me. The one I left with him so he could keep giving it to me each time we met. I forget I never saw him again. Forget why he didn’t memorise the world and stay with me.

  I just memorised the twenty-three cars that passed by since we started this bus ride. I won’t bore you with their colours or the expressions on their faces. I’m not speaking of the drivers or passengers. The faces beneath the faces. Everyone here is a grave. And a pulse.

  Once we get to Damascus Gate, I will begin a new version. I will forget the version when I walked by the vendor selling vine leaves and radios, dates and multi-cultured spices. When the merchandise dangling above was like the colourful pages of books of all sizes. When two girls were playing with their ponytails and a boy was holding his father’s hand. When a man with a beaten wooden cart of lemons was heading out as I moved towards the fork in the street. I will forget that version. The version when he didn’t come and the clouds clustered together were a reflection of the bodies beneath them. I will forget that version. I will memorise only the versions that came after that one.

  A year later. Four o’clock. Another blaze in the distance. My eyes unable to close. It’s unbearable to keep re-seeing the ruins of small bodies. A roar under a cry. A sea beyond a heart. Shadows beneath shadows. Boots pressing the air out of rooftops. The threat is everywhere, even in the stack of papers in front
of me. I can’t sleep because the fear and the vigour to resist it leave me no time for caution, and time is outside of time here. We find unusual ways to survive each scar as night tries to escape the death it will awake to. The girl on the bus comes back to me. She reminds me to wait for the adhan, the call to prayer. The sun to rise. The church bells to ring. I am in Bethlehem.

  Jesus was born here. But I haven’t seen Jesus for a while, something to do with not having a permit. It’s summer 2014. The third Israeli war on Gaza in six years is going on. We want one minute to stop our hearts from racing. Just one minute. But here one minute is a lifetime. No one can reach grief on time to grieve properly. I’m sitting by the window where I’ve been sitting for hours. I lose track of how many. The stack of papers on the table in front of me is untouched. I feel what I once felt standing in the middle of a grove in Jaffa, holding two oranges, one in each hand: a feeling that turned into a voice, a voice that mapped a past. From the corner of my eye I glimpse the cloud flirting with the sun on and off my face. I start writing about Lifta.

  It’s one of my favourite places and one of the most stunning pre-1948 Palestinian villages in the District of Jerusalem. Lifta’s inhabitants were expelled, or they fled. Earlier in the summer, before Israel’s war on Gaza began, I asked a few writers and theatre workers to meet me there so we could think about a play about the pre-1948 Palestinian village. What remains of Lifta is under constant threat of being razed.

  Not long before our meeting one of the Palestinian writers, currently living in London, was denied entry into the country. No reason given. Then the writer living in Haifa but originally from the hilltop village of Iqrit had clashes to deal with. For a few years now Iqrit descendants have been trying to reclaim their ancestral village in northern Galilee. They confront a colony of jarring obstacles. Iqrit’s inhabitants were forced to leave their homes in 1948 when the new Israeli army alleged the area was dangerous. They were never permitted to return.